For The Love of a Travelin' Soldier
by princessxleah
Summary: Sometimes she really hated being that girl. AU.


Cristina Yang never thought she would be that girl, the one who watched her boyfriend get on a plane in his fatigues and go off to war, his kiss still tingling on her lips as he looked at her one last time before the plane took off.

How cliche could you get?

But for Owen Hunt, she was that girl, the one who read his letters eagerly and treasured each rare phone call. The one who stoically watched the news every day, not knowing if it was his unit that was the one blown up that day, if this would be the day where some counter-offensive would finally claim his life, despite his reassurances and his teasing that he fully expected a very intense welcome home from her when his tour was over, that she should harness all of the energy she expended worrying and stressing out over him and save it for the marathon sex that they were going to have when he returned.

She was that girl who had her fair share of men that propositioned her while her man was serving his country, the girl who would resent it and feel bitter when she had to turn them down out of respect for her relationship, one she barely felt that she was in as the time he was gone increased, and she was lonely and in need of comfort, and sometimes she blamed him, hated that he wasn't there for her in those moments of weakness, then hated herself for putting it on him. These were the times where the letters she fired off were full of vitriol, railing at him for making her go through this, because she just didn't want to deal with it anymore.

She was the girl that waited for him at the airport when he managed to come home on leave, the one who forgave it all just for the taste of him on her lips once again, who welcomed him into her long since cold bed, who laid with him for hours just being, because now that he was here everything would snap back into focus. They would laugh and fuck and enjoy together all of the creature comforts he could not have while overseas, including the beard he grew because he knew she loved how it felt on her sensitive skin.

Life would be good again.

And then he would leave again, and she was the girl at the airport once again, watching him go, only the memory of his lips on hers sustaining her.

Sometimes she really hated being that girl. It was a difficult way to live, alone yet bound to someone half a world away, and sometimes in moments of anger, loneliness and frustration she wished she had fallen in love with someone...easier, someone who didn't have noble aspirations to save lives in a war zone, someone who would just be there, that she wouldn't have to worry about day and night. Someone to hear her rant about the long day at the hospital when she got home, someone to lose to her at Scrabble, someone to hold her in her bed and forget about everything, because who needed to think when his arms were around her and her head was resting on his chest?

And then she read his letters, so vibrant and reflective of the man writing, telling her of his days and how much he wanted her and missed her, received his calls, the deep voice that laughed and whispered naughty dreams he'd had of her and told her that he loved her and that he'd be home before she knew it, or saw him descend the steps from the airplane, his smile lighting up his face and his arms open to lift her in his arms, and she couldn't imagine loving anyone else.

Now, she had no choice. She would be that girl whether she liked it or not.

Because from the time she had heard his name read on a local news station to memorialize those soldiers who had lost their lives that past week overseas, she had been that girl once again; the one who frantically called dead-end numbers and sought some sort of official retraction from the military, clung to the thought that it was all a horrible mistake, relied on her scientific belief that until she had solid evidence, it couldn't be true, and prayed to a higher being she didn't believe in to make it all be a lie.

Her need for evidence was served with an official letter, his dogtags, and a plain military casket draped in a flag she saw brought out of an airplane by fellow military men.

For once she hated the fact that she believed in science, that she knew. She hated that she had been right and all of the belief in religion and God and crap was bullshit, because for once she really, really wanted to believe in all of it.

She was that girl who sat next to his mother at the funeral, who watched the twenty-one gun salute, who watched the flag folded and handed to his mother, who sat wearing black as everyone whispered about the widow he had left behind, which was inaccurate as they had never bothered to get married, because what they had was enough and it was official in their eyes.

The girl who sat alone by the grave long after everyone else had left, with only his posthumous medals of various honors, pressed into her hand by his mother, his dogtags wrapped around her wrist and memories of a man with warm blue eyes and a boyish smile and his lips on hers to comfort her.

The girl who was pining for her love lost in war, kneeling in the warm dirt beside his freshly dug grave, as if she could somehow be closer to a man who no longer breathed, laughed, or could love her.

Really, how cliche could you get?


End file.
